Hehe…most likely, protect them from over-”guidance”, I suppose.

Another paradox in this media strategy that Zheng Bowei proposed: I’d agree that it’s crucial to understand the demands of the audience, and to be timely and thorough. Also, I’d agree that the line between domestic and international is now blurred, media-wise. But, when major news events and conflicts arise, this is precisely when savvy media professionals seem to lose control over message, and people higher up in the political food chain seem to take direct control. In other words, in times of contentious conflict (the Tibet issue last year comes to mind), this is exactly when China could use bridge-individuals or relatively credible official PR people to make timely responses the most, but it’s also a time of tightened message discipline that I suspect would be made at levels completely out of control of PR professionals (ie. the Standing Committee of the Politburo). Similarly, in these tense situations, the rules of engagement are dramatically different for domestic and international audiences, and the demands of the audiences would also differ considerably, leaving a PR professional unable to communicate effectively to both.

James Fallows once speculated about bad PR, and thought that the answer might have something to do with control in the hierarchy:

“Many Chinese who have seen the world are very canny about it, and have just the skills government spokesmen lack—for instance, understanding the root of foreign concerns and addressing them not with special pleading (“This is China…”) but on their own terms. Worldly Chinese demonstrate this every day in the businesses, universities, and nongovernmental organizations where they generally work. But the closer Chinese officials are to centers of political power, the less they know what they don’t know about the world.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200811/chinese-progress/3

I don’t know if they’ll be able to solve this PR problem without fixing some the structural problems in the government’s political system and in the domestic media control apparatus. I’d be interested to hear what other people think.

I do however, wonder to what extent it will even matter though. For decades the US has often been portrayed as an aloof, arrogant, giant, and I’m not sure to what extent negative public opinion about the US actually translated into tangible problems. Even in the worst case scenario (the first half of the Bush administration) most tangible hits to American interests were caused by other countries reacting to Bush’s stated goal of unilaterally acting in the international system without regards to international law or the interests of other countries. Once he basically stopped acting in that way and went back to diplomacy in normal ways (roughly Bush’s second term), countries stopped trying to overtly ally against the US, and most arraignments seemed to go back to normal- even if the US’s worldwide reputation remained terribly damaged. (Of course, I might be wrong about this characterization).

Similarly, I think we’ve witnessed an unprecedented rise in China’s relative power in the last two or three years. This is based on mainly on economics, geo-politics, and military influence. China’s “popularity” in world opinion polls has stayed relatively stable, or has dipped a little over the past few years. I think this shows that power and popular opinion are really not directly linked. Also, with the so-called “rise of the rest” or rise of the “second world” – all the countries in Latin America, Asia and Africa that are making great progress in development, I think the importance of soft power will be even less important.

From another point of view, you could also argue that in the past (when it was hard to learn about foreign countries without going there) public diplomacy was an important way to present one’s country to a foreign audience. Now, with the Internet, anyone can get lots of info about other countries from tons of different perspectives. Anyone with an internet connection anywhere in the world can access the hundreds of websites and blogs dedicated to China. In this type of media environment, I’m not sure how effective a state-led media campaign will be in controlling the discourse in a particular country. Although, I suppose it could be effective in countries in which most people don’t speak Chinese or English, and the Chinese government could then invest a lot of money into the media markets and help mold public opinion.

1) I think your characterization of current IR trends (mix of Western realism, Chinese Marxism and traditional Chinese thinking (Warring States etc)) is probably fairly accurate. Although, as you said, I’m sure there are a lots of scholars who are also experts on soft power and all sorts of transnational issues.

2) I think the issue is indeed the ability to “change the discourse”, but to some degree, I’m skeptical that this can happen. If one accepts that public perceptions are not totally unimportant, but also that under most circumstances, policy is made by a combination of China wonks, business associations, security and financial analysts, activists…etc. to what extent are these people familiar with Chinese discourse, policy concerns and genuine interests? I would argue that the majority, at least in the US, are familiar enough with China to understand the Chinese point of view, so to speak, and many are already quite familiar with Chinese narratives. (Of course, being aware of another country’s historical and political narratives and agreeing with it are two different matters, as even many Chinese IR profs who had lived in the US for several years have pointed out to me.) But to be fair, to the extent discourse and narratives do matter, I suppose it would be foolish of a government not to try to influence them as much as they can.

3) Yu Qiuyu had an interesting piece talking about how “bridge-individuals” could be effective communicators between audiences, and Roland Soong has had similar ideas:

http://www.danwei.org/china_and_foreign_relations/yu_qiuyu_on_crosscultural_comm.php

http://zonaeuropa.com/20091109_1.htm

Yu Qiuyu wrote:

“At the broadest level, cultural communication must choose a format of presentation that is internationally persuasive. Tagore brought Indian culture to the mainstream of western culture. Hemingway allowed European culture to be accepted in the US. In ancient China, Xuanzang, Jianzhen (Ganjin), Zhu Shunshui, Matteo Ricci, John Adam Schall von Bell, and Xu Guangqi were this kind of bridge individual. In modern China, Hu Shi, Zhao Yuanren, and Lin Yutang were perhaps that kind of individual, but unfortunately the chaos of war unavoidably snapped the use of those cultural ties. The China of today has Yao Ming, Lang Lang, and several internationally-recognized movie actors who play a truly active role in those cultural ties. I trust that from this day on, cross-cultural communication will no longer primarily be accomplished through national-level speech and government activities; rather, it will develop centered around these captivating bridge-individuals. These bridge-individuals will perhaps be artists, athletes, scholars, philanthropists, or theologians, but the majority will not be officials. So we must wait to discover them and to protect them.”

With that in mind, it seems to me that the issue of creating enough “bridge people” is crucial, and being a credible “bridge-individual” is the key. Whether a state-led person will be seen as credible is an issue, but perhaps as importantly, a state-led person may not have the freedom to speak openly and candidly enough to make compelling arguments for China’s legitimate interests. For example, the so-called “China Threat” theory can be fairly persuasively argued against, (see, for example, Steven Chan’s “China, the US and Power-transition Theory: A Critique”), but the person must be independent enough to speak frankly, and the person must be able to understand the other culture well enough to take some of the core, legitimate concerns seriously.

4) As just mentioned, if this public-diplomacy is conducted with the underlying assumptions that foreign audiences simply don’t “understand China” and that all conflict and tension stems from an ignorant misunderstanding, then I don’t see much hope for it.

In any case, I suppose the core paradox is that China really isn’t really getting it’s legitimate message about its society and politics out well enough to the world, but at the same time, a state-run attempt to fix things through a massive media conglomerate or state-led public diplomacy seems like a dubious and wasteful solution. Of course, I may be wrong.

William: Really good points. I’ll have a go at briefly responding to them:

1) I think you’re right that most of the discussion around Chinese foreign policy seems relatively realist to someone trained in Western IR theory, although Chinese IR is mostly (according to Gerald Chan, I think) a mix of Western realism, Chinese Marxism and traditional Chinese thinking (Warring States etc). It certainly seems to be very focused on power, but in terms of “Comprehensive National Power” (综合国力) rather than just “hard power”. CNP includes both hard and soft elements and, if I understand the concept correctly, needs to be developed in a balanced way if it is to be effective. Recently, there has been more attention paid to the underdeveloped side of CNP – the soft power stuff.

2) Yes, this is a tricky one. Perhaps in some recent areas – I am thinking in particular of Australian government decisions that have blocked Chinese investment in Australian resource companies – public opinion may have been a factor in preventing China from getting what it wanted, or at least the events have been perceived that way in China. I think Key expressed it well when he wrote that public opinion doesn’t determine foreign policy but rather channels it, placing limits on policy via a “system of dikes”. But I don’t think this is just a matter of changing the inputs into the decision-making process, but actually changing the broader discourse about China in (mainly) the West. Whether you think this matters or not probably depends on where you sit in relation to constructivist approaches to IR.

3) Yes, and we can see that the Chinese interpretation of soft power is somewhat different from Nye’s (as David pointed out). The major emphasis in China has been on the media and culture, with the political values side of Nye’s formulation completely ignored. Thus the major investments in expanding the international media and promoting Chinese culture. The potential problems with this kind of state-led soft power are pretty clear though.

4) Yes, perhaps Zheng needs to consider more seriously his own advice about “grasping the mood and demands of overseas audiences”.

Kingsley

All great comments and questions. I wish I had time to respond cogently to them, but I’ll just have to leave them there and hope others offer their own insights.

Best,
David

Here are a few random thoughts that have been floating around my head in relation to “soft power” and China’s new international media push.

1) In my limited experience in Chinese academia and in talking to Chinese IR thinkers, they tend to overwhelmingly fall into the “realist” camp, and most reject many liberal foreign policy ideas, and they tend to downplay soft transnational issues, or things like “soft power”. If it is indeed true that prevailing Chinese foreign policy thinking tends to be dominated by different forms of realism and issues related to hard power, then how exactly did this whole “soft power” push come about, and what do they actually think they can accomplish if it succeeds?

2) To what extent does domestic opinion really even matter in the formulation of foreign policy in most countries, especially as it relates to China? I think you could argue that back in the 1990′s, right after Tiananmen and going through the whole human rights/MFN debates, domestic opinion was fairly important. However, these days, it seems to me that domestic opinion about China is of relatively little importance (at least in the US) and most policy is made through a combination of China wonks, professional business interests and lobbies, and security analysts and so on. China simply hasn’t really been a major issue in most congressional or presidential elections in a long time, and even when it does appear, it’s usually not even close to being the top issue. Congresspeople might get pressed over a few hot button topics from activists (torture, the death penalty, abortion), but this hardly represents the mainstream, and I doubt China could change hardcore activists’ minds about anything anyway. Granted, the role of public opinion might be slightly more important in other countries, but even most EU countries unwillingness to really press on human rights seems to indicate that public opinion isn’t at the forefront of concerns for many European politicians. Perhaps in the developing world opinion about China and its influence may be more prominent, but I think they’d be even more likely to be swayed by economic deals and trade.

If what I’m saying arguing here is more or less accurate (that domestic popular opinion plays a relatively minor role in foreign policy formulation in most countries) then why are they spending so much money on this and what do they think they can achieve? As a case in point, both the Tibet protest/riots and this year’s Xinjiang riots were two high profile events that many netizens felt that they got a raw deal in the “Western” press. Even if you accept that the press coverage was highly biased, what exactly did China lose in terms of policy? The reaction from almost every government was extremely minimal.

3) In my understanding, “soft power” many comes from a society’s civil society produces culture, and the attraction it has to others. The PRC of course has the advantage of being the inheritors to Confucius, Mencius, Lao Zi, and all of China’s historic glory. But beyond this, what does modern Chinese culture have to attract foreign audiences (in terms of novels, music or popular movies)? To what extent does a highly “guided” media culture that stifles creativity put Chinese civil society at a disadvantage?

4) How effective will this outreach be if they think all Westerners are either antagonistic, arrogant, prejudiced, conventional, ignorant. This doesn’t seem to match the reality of current discourse about China in the US (“they own all our debt! They’re producing the technology of the future…”).

Anyway, I hope my comments don’t come off as too harsh. I’m just fairly skeptical of the importance of “soft power” in general, and it seems to me that the way in which China is planning to go about it, will almost certainly be a huge waste of money.